Ordinary Thunderstorms

30

THE STEAM WAS AMAZINGLY opaque, like watery milk, almost, like slowly shifting watery milk, stirred by currents of air as people walked to and fro. A real pea-souper fog of steam, Adam thought.

“This is buzzing,” Ly-on said.

Adam turned. He could see Ly-on because he was sitting right beside him. His little pot belly swagged over the edge of his towel, his curly hair damp with moisture, flattening against his skull.

“I never be in a place like this,” he said.

“Tell me when you get too hot.”

Mhouse had gone out early that morning, for some reason, and Adam had been alone with Ly-on in the flat. He had washed up the dishes in the sink (boiling a kettle for hot water) and had taken a bucket through to the lavatory to flush and then refill the cistern. Living with one cold water tap to provide for a household had its disadvantages — very Third World, he thought. When he returned to the kitchenette Ly-on was cleaning his teeth in the sink. Adam felt suddenly unwashed, smirched — and consequently began to itch — he needed, he realised, a hot bath. A Turkish bath. Someone had handed him a flyer for the Purlin Nail Lane Baths when he’d been begging at London Bridge Station — this was what had set the notion in his head: words like ‘Sudatorium’ and ‘Tepidarium’ made the simple process of cleaning yourself seem both timeless and exotic. He slipped out, found a functioning pay phone on Level 1 and called Mhouse.

“You taking him where?” she said.

“To the baths in Deptfbrd. The Purlin Nail Lane Baths.”

“He can’t swim, you know.”

“We’re not going for a swim.”

It was surprisingly expensive at the baths—£10 for an adult, £5 for a child — but he supposed you could be there from morning to night if you had a mind to. It was a men-only day and, it being a Thursday morning, the place was tranquil. He showed Ly-on the swimming pool.

“It’s a lake, man,” he said, intrigued. “Buzzing.”

“Would you like to swim in it?”

“You bet, John. You teach me? I like that, John.”

“Yeah — one day.”

They changed out of their clothes in the Frigidarium and, wearing their towels round their waists, went into the steam room. From the odd cough and creak of wooden benches, they knew they weren’t alone. He and Ly-on took their seats and waited for the sweat to flow.

When Ly-on said he was well roasted they went out to the plunge pool. They hung up their towels and Adam lifted Ly-on into his arms: he was surprisingly light. Ly-on put an arm around Adam’s neck as they stepped down the tiled steps into the icy water.

“Cor,” Ly-on said as the cold water hit his flushed body. “I’m dreaming this. Peas, man — green, green peas.”

Adam let him float away from him a little, holding his hands.

“How old are you, Ly-on?” Adam asked.

“I’m two, I think,” he said.

“No, you’re older than that.”

“Maybe seven. Mummy don’t tell me. Maybe I’m four.”

“I think you’re probably about seven. Where’s your dad?”

“I never had no dad. Just Mum.”

“Do you go to school?”

“No. Mum says we do home-teaching.”

After the plunge pool they went into the hottest room, the Laconium. The heat stunned — anaesthetised them both: it was enough simply to breathe, conversation was impossible and they could only stand it for a couple of minutes. Ly-on whispered, “I’m dying, I’m burning,” so they went back to chill down in the plunge pool before they opted for more steam in the Sudatorium. But it worked, Adam felt he had never been cleaner in his entire existence: every pore void and pink, every sebaceous crevice purged and purified. Under a hot shower he shampooed his hair and beard, washed Ly-on’s curly mop for him. They dressed and stepped out on to Purlin Nail Lane.

“You hungry?” Adam said.

“Drinking,” Ly-on said. “I need drinking.”

They went to a pub where Ly-on had two pints of lime and lemonade with ice and Adam drank two pints of lager, immediately replacing the weight he had lost in the steam room. He ate a baked potato with beans and grated cheese and Ly-on had spaghetti for the first time in his life. They went to Greenwich and Adam took him into the Maritime Museum and then they wandered down to the river bank where Adam bought him a sweatshirt with the word ‘LONDON’ written across it.

“What’s that?” Ly-on said. “Lon-don?” Reading the word, Adam was pleased to note.

“That’s where you live. London.”

“I live for Shaft.”

“The Shaft’s in London.” He gestured at the river, at the far bank, at Millwall and Cubitt Town opposite and, towering beyond them, the glass and steel alps of Canary Wharf. “All this is part of London.”

They rode the Dockland Light Railway back to Bermondsey and walked to Rotherhithe. As they made their way along the pitted pathways of The Shaft, through its various bedraggled, worn quadrangles, hand in hand, Ly-on quizzed him about the city he lived in.

“So if somebody say — hey, Ly-on, man, where you come from? I say — I come from London.”

“Yes.”

“So, I say: I’m a London, I’m a London, me.”

“Londoner. You’re a Londoner.”

“Londoner…” He thought about that. “That’s fit, John. Green peas.”

“Say it with pride. It’s a great city, the greatest city in the world.”

“You a Londoner, John?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Why?”

“I don’t live here, I’m not from here. I’m just visiting.”

They were almost level with the big guy coming towards them when Adam saw who it was. He let him go past and then changed course so he could get an oblique view. He stopped and looked back. It was the man from the triangle, the man from the mews at Grafton Lodge, the man he’d knocked unconscious. The man was walking purposefully, briskly, as if late for a rendezvous. He hadn’t seen Adam, had walked right by him without a sideways glance — but, of course, he wasn’t looking for a bearded man holding the hand of a small boy.

“What’s knocking you, John?” Ly-on asked in a worried voice. “What’s freezing you?”

Adam eased his grip on Ly-on’s hand.

“Nothing. Let’s get home.”

♦

In the flat — Mhouse was back — Adam gathered up his few possessions as Ly-on tried to explain to her what spaghetti was. (“Strings, Mum, like soft strings. Fit like new car.”) Adam shoved his old pin-stripe suit and his various shirts into two plastic bags, checking his room thoroughly to make sure there was nothing left that would associate him with the place.

“What you mean, you leaving?” Mhouse said, with disgruntled surprise, when Adam offered her two weeks’ rent in advance.

“I told you I’ve been offered this job. In—” He thought quickly. “Edinburgh.”

“Where’s that?” she said, taking the notes.

“Scotland.”

“Near Manchester?”

“Nearish. If anyone asks, say I’ve gone to Scotland. Got that? Scotland.”

Ly-on was lying on cushions in front of the TV, watching cartoons.

“I’m going away for a few days,” Adam said, crouching down beside him.

“OK.” Ly-on’s eyes stayed on the screen. “When you come back can we go to the mist again?”

“Sure.”

“Green, green peas.”

At the door Mhouse now seemed breezy, unconcerned.

“Mind how you go,” she said. “Take care.”

“I’ll be back,” Adam said, knowing he wouldn’t and suddenly found himself completely incapable of articulating his feelings, understanding only that he had to remove himself permanently from this small family that had sheltered him.

“I liked being here, you know,” he said. “With you and Ly-on.” He touched her arm, letting his fingertips follow the swell of her bicep. “Especially you.”

She brushed his fingers away.

“I’ll have to get me another lodger now, won’t I?”

“I suppose so.” He swallowed. “Can I kiss you goodbye?”

She turned her face so her cheek was presented to him.

“On the lips.”

“No kissing.”

“Please.”

She looked at him. “It’ll cost you.”

He gave her a £5 note and pressed his lips to hers. He breathed in, smelling her particular odour and its superimposed layers of perfume — hair spray, talcum powder, cheap scent, trying to remember it, trying to store it away in his memory bank for the future. He felt her tongue flash against his teeth for a second — and their tongues touched.

“You’d better go,” she said blankly, unfeelingly, pulling back. “Now.”

Was that a spontaneous sign of affection or a deliberate rebuke? Adam wondered as he walked out of The Shaft with his two plastic bags, not looking left or right. Will she miss me a little — or am I just another man, in the long list of men, who’ve disappointed her and cut and run? All he knew was that he had been tracked down and, if he didn’t leave, he would inevitably lead his hunter to Flat L, Level 3, Unit 14. It had been no malign, extraordinary coincidence — the ugly man was in The Shaft for one reason only: he knows I’m here, somewhere, Adam said to himself, experiencing a surge and shudder of retrospective fear that made him stop for a second. What if he hadn’t seen him? What if he and Ly-on hadn’t crossed his path?…

He quickened his pace, heading south, wanting to be in a crowd. An Underground station — Canada Water — that would do fine. He’d make his phone call from there.

♦

“Hey, Adam. I don’t believing. Fantastic, fantastic.” Vladimir embraced him like a brother, Adam thought, almost tearfully: like a brother who’d been away at a war and had been presumed missing in action.

“You my first visitor,” Vladimir said, stepping back from the front door and beckoning him into the flat.

Vladimir’s single-bedroom flat was in Stepney, in a building erected by a charitable trust housing project from the 19208—Oystergate Buildings, off Ben Jonson Road. It was grimy and grey, built entirely of white-glazed bricks — that gave it an eerie monochrome appearance, almost like a ghost building — glazed bricks that were now cracked and stained. The façade was fussy with open landings, narrow balconies and wrought-iron railings everywhere, a far cry from the austere angles of The Shaft. Vladimir had a bathroom, kitchen, bedroom and sitting room. In the sitting room was a new, black, three-seater, leather sofa and a flat-screen TV. The rest of the small apartment seemed entirely unfurnished — no towels in the bathroom, no kitchen utensils — only a mattress and some tangled blankets on the floor of the bedroom.

“You sleep on sofa,” Vladimir said.

“Where did you get this stuff?”

Vladimir flourished his credit card. “You have wonderful country.”

They went out and ate chicken burgers and chips in a Chick—“N”—Go. Adam paid, it was the least he could do, he thought, and Vladimir seemed to have no cash on him — he was living entirely on what his credit card could provide. They bought a six-pack of beer and returned to Oystergate Buildings. Adam gave Vladimir a month’s rent in advance—£80. Vladimir said that everything would change once he started his job on Monday as a hospital porter at the nearby Bethnal & Bow NHS Trust hospital. He would be earning a starting salary of £10,500 a year. He showed Adam his uniform — blue trousers and a white shirt with blue epaulettes and a blue tie — and his necklaced ‘proximity’ ID badge with his photo in the name of ‘Primo Belem’. Then Vladimir asked if he could borrow a further £50—he would pay him back with his first pay cheque. Adam handed it over — he was running low on cash himself now, he’d have to visit his bank in the triangle.

“I get some monkey,” Vladimir said. “We party this weekend before I starting work. We smoke monkey — best quality.”

“Great,” Adam said.

That night he lay on the creaking leather sofa (Vladimir had lent him one of his blankets) thinking about Mhouse and Ly-on. He was feeling sorry for himself again, conscious of the precarious nature of his life, his particular, unique plight and this new threat that, through swift response, was now neutralised, he assumed and hoped. He missed Mhouse and Ly-on, he had to admit, missed his life in The Shaft with them. But he consoled himself: despite the bleak realities he faced — his rare situation — he had done the only thing possible. He had had to leave The Shaft: at least Mhouse and Ly-on would be safe now, that was all that was really important, all that mattered.